


She is a memory

by LilRedRobinHood



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice, Vader's POV, angst with a glimmer of hope, implied but subjective character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:33:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24038932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilRedRobinHood/pseuds/LilRedRobinHood
Summary: Ahsoka Tano must be destroyed, for only then will your dreaming stop.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Kudos: 26





	She is a memory

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this way back in 2017 and then forgot about it completely, which means that it is heavily influenced by my perceptions of the episode at the time, so... make of that what you will.
> 
> (the title is a reference to 'You are a memory' by Message to Bears)

Her escape seals forever closed, and she has not run from you. A part of you hates her for being fool enough to trust you, to call you by that name you buried so long ago. 

Ahsoka Tano must be destroyed, for only then will your dreaming stop. Though sleep has never been safe for you, still you tell yourself that this will bring you peace, but peace is a lie, and the truth that you see in your dreams--that no matter what you do, how you beg, she will always leave you--will remain long after any dreams are gone. 

The woman standing before you is a dream, a phantom, and Vader must kill her because of a betrayal that, perhaps, should have long ago been forgiven. Vader must kill her because as long as she lives you will fear losing this phantom, _your_ phantom, a second time. Vader must kill Ahsoka for the simple reason that as long as she lives, you will love her.

And Vader is not permitted to love.

Your blood-red blade lashes down against her twin sabers of pure light, and together they grind and burn. You stare into those eyes that Anakin Skywalker once loved and wish that your long since shattered bond could prevent you from feeling the anguish behind them as keenly as if it were your own.

Her saber carves the crimson haze away from your vision, and you see that those eyes are still a flaming blue. 

In a voice that is no longer your own, you say her name.

It is a mistake.

She glimpses Skywalker's emaciated corpse and makes him--the fragile, dead fool--a promise. The sincerity in her oath rings like a shudder through your entire being, and against your will you look upon her as she is and always was.

She is a memory, one drenched in pain.

Your blade swings desperately, for she has awakened the fear in you which Vader should already have crushed, and her light, overwhelming in its intrinsicity, blinds you to the tremors in the force that wash over you in stinging waves.

When at last you do feel them, it is too late.

Your platform is beginning to shatter, and once it does the entire temple will follow. The world shifts under your feet.

_"Anakin!"_

Any moment now--you sense this future in your durasteel bones--any moment now the end will come.

And there she is, the Apprentice, your Phantom, with her arm stretched out toward you, her fingers straining for yours. Both of you reel as the platform shatters into a web of shifting plates, but those flaming eyes are locked impossibly to yours. 

In that moment only, in that single moment suspended between the present and the _end_ that both master and apprentice recognize as inescapable, you forget that you are not what she sees, you forget the mask that no longer obscures her pleading eyes, you forget your new name. You have forgotten, and so you really cannot be blamed when, in that moment, your hand reaches for hers.

_Fitting that master and apprentice should be together once more_ , you think with a foreign quietness, _Here, at the end of all things._

The moment slashes viciously between you. Your hand is snatched away by the blast that hurls you through a roaring storm that fills your head and riddles what remains of your corrupted body like blaster fire.

The storm ends, but not in the manner you had expected it to. The roar of it still echoes through your helmet, though you know you are surrounded by silence and agonizing light. Your breathing apparatus is malfunctioning, your breath hitched and barely satisfying your mechanical lungs. Your limbs spark dangerously, and your torso is burning from the stabbings of a hundred tiny daggers. 

You stagger upright and, reluctantly, turn back. 

The ancient temple is a smoking pile of rubble. Utterly worthless. You are standing at the far perimeter, and through some sadistic trick of fate, still breathing. You have failed your Master, and for this you will pay dearly.

You cannot bring yourself to care.

You trudge in the direction of your ship, your mechanical wheezing just barely sustaining each dragged step.

The Phantom is dead at last, and with her, those burning blue eyes which had been the first to see Skywalker since...since his death fifteen years before. Your eyes were once that color, you think distantly. No longer, of course. For that, the Phantom is to blame. She abandoned you, though you begged her to stay. As your phantoms always do. You had felt her absence keenly in those days before your Master’s darkness drowned Skywalker and all that he had ever loved.

It makes little difference that her destruction has given you no pleasure.

It makes little difference that this time, she had sworn that she would stay.

Still, you _had_ expected this...sensation _,_ to abate.

Your saber had never once touched her. You had taught her well--perhaps too well. A lesser pupil would have abandoned you twice.

You clench your fist--the cowardly one which had reached for her--until the mechanical joints grind and hiss together, and you tell yourself that all is as it should be, that alongside the Apprentice, your past is at last buried, dead, and behind you. 

_I won’t leave you. Not this time_.

You can hear her oath still, the words which had so briefly and mockingly stripped the years away.

_It is too late for me, young one_ , you whisper to your Phantom, who kept her oath. _Fifteen years too late._

But the cavernous ache in your chest whispers that, had the temple not stolen the final choice from you, the hand which had reached for the Apprentice(the Phantom, who still saw Anakin Skywalker behind the mask), could not have cut her down.

  
  



End file.
